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Digital mobility helps people break the workplace's shackles
"I had just finished a job I did for a major bank," says copywriter Scott Perry.
- By Rhymer Rigby, Financial Times
- Published: 01:04 February 9, 2008
- One can work from anywhere using the internet and a cellphone.
- Image Credit: Gulf News
I had just finished a job I did for a major bank," says copywriter Scott Perry.
"I'd been working with a designer in Manchester and the client was in Amsterdam. I started thinking that, for over half the jobs I do, I never met the people I was working for - and that even if I did the meetings produced little more than a phone call could accomplish. It was then I realised I didn't have to be in London."
That he had just come back from a skiing holiday undoubtedly helped focus these thoughts. "I'd swapped the blue and white of the Alps for a grey London February where the sky was 10 feet from my window."
Perry had long wanted to learn Spanish, so he decided to move to Madrid to immerse himself in the culture, living there for most of the year, except for winters in the Alps. But all his work is still done for organisations in the UK. While away from his Madrid base, his only real requirement is a hotel that has WiFi.
"I fly back for meetings a few times a year, but it really makes no difference at all to my work. If anything, it works in my favour - clients know me as the copywriter who lives in Madrid."
Breaking the shackles
People like Perry, liberated from the shackles of the workplace by technology, are living the lifestyle futurologists and tech evangelists have promised for years.
Such working practices no longer demand a home within commuting distance of the office: we can live somewhere that offers us the lifestyle we want while still working for organisations that offer us the greatest rewards. Even if the two are in different countries.
Others have embraced slightly different versions of digital mobility to Perry's. For the past five years, Bruce Tognazzini, a partner with human-computer interaction specialists Nielsen Norman Group, has been spending seven months of the year in his RV (recreational vehicle) driving round the US with his wife. He communicates using a mobile and a satellite broadband linkup.
"It would have been impossible 20 years ago," he says, "but it's actually quite comfortable working on the road now." Every year, he says, he and his wife follow the sun to explore swathes of the country that the coastal elites only ever see from the air.
He is now in southern Florida working for a client in Chicago. The only downside he can think of is "it's expensive to send and receive faxes".
Knowledge economy
IT usability guru Jakob Nielsen, Tognazzini's business partner, says that there have been two key reasons why this type of working arrangement has grown in popularity. First, the dramatic growth of the knowledge economy. Second, the vast improvements in terms of the reliability and lower cost of mobile technology.
Nielsen believes that the spread of true high-speed internet and improved mobile devices will push up the numbers of people adopting the flexible work trend.
He says that one concern many people have -time zones - is overstated as an issue because knowledge workers tend to work round the clock anyway.
However, many businesses really are not ready to let the corporate umbilical cord stretch that far.
For three years Matt Low, a New York-based brand consultant, spent six months of the year in the city, three months in the Hamptons and the winter in Lake Tahoe skiing.
But recently, he's been spending far more time in New York and less away. Partly because he has more meetings, but there are other reasons too.
"I really liked it, but there was something about it that feels like you're never fully at work and you're never fully relaxed. Now I go for two or three weeks and it's proper holiday time, although I set aside one or two days to work."
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